Last year, one of The Sand Trap‘s favorite golf course architects had a regular update his site about the number of players averaging over 300 yards on the PGA Tour. This year, he’s spared us from such updates. I didn’t really understood why until I took a closer look.
There were 26 players last year averaging over 300 yards per drive. This year, it has dropped to eleven. This week in The Numbers Game I’ll look not only at the longer players, but the rest of the tour to see if the drop in distance is spread out and how it affects another stat.
The 300 Club
Through Buick Championship only eleven players are in The 300 Club. You would think that the 2006 members would mostly be holdovers from 2005, but that would be incorrect. Only four of the eleven (John Daly, Brett Wetterich, Tag Ridings, Adam Scott) have averaged 300 or more yards both years. The rest of the eleven are newcomers like Bubba Watson, J.B. Holmes, and Camillo Villegas. Only one player on tour last year has improved their average over 300 yards… the ageless Fred Couples.
Another interesting fact about the players in last year’s 300 Club is that seventeen of them have played enough tournaments to qualify for this year’s stats and only two of them gained distance.
Player 2006 2005 Diff ------ ----- ----- ---- Brett Wetterich 305.5 311.7 -6.2 John Daly 304.7 310.1 -5.4 Davis Love III 298.0 305.4 -7.4 Kenny Perry 289.3 304.7 -15.4 Sergio Garcia 287.9 303.5 -15.6 Brandt Jobe 294.8 302.3 -7.5 Lucas Glover 297.3 302.2 -4.9 Mathias Gronberg 293.6 301.4 -7.8 Vijay Singh 293.6 301.1 -7.5 Harrison Frazar 298.5 301.0 -2.5 Chris Smith 298.4 300.8 -2.4 Stuart Appleby 287.8 300.6 -12.8 Tag Ridings 307.6 300.2 7.4 Will MacKenzie 296.5 300.2 -3.7 Sean O'Hair 290.1 300.1 -10.0 Adam Scott 300.4 300.1 0.3 Phil Mickelson 298.3 300.0 -1.7
Adam Scott was actually under 300 yards per drive a few weeks ago and managed to reverse his loss in distance in the last past couple tournaments. His current average is 300.4, a whopping 0.3 yards more than last year. Other than Scott and Tag Ridings, there have been some significant drops. On average, the players in the table above have lost over 6 yards per drive. The longest have gotten shorter.
Is Anyone Gaining Distance?
Of course there are players gaining some distance. Most of the guys putting on the yards are the ones that needed them. Below is a list of the top 10 players that increased their driving average from last year.
Driving Rank Driving Distance Player 2006 2005 2006 2005 Diff ------ ------------ ----------------- ---- Rich Beem 38 106 295.6 288.0 +7.6 Tag Ridings 4 20 307.6 300.2 +7.4 Brian Bateman 28 76 297.2 291.1 +6.1 Brent Geiberger 97 162 287.1 281.1 +6.0 Corey Pavin 191 202 264.6 258.7 +5.9 Stewart Cink 67 126 291.1 285.5 +5.6 Mark Brooks 182 199 274.0 269.1 +4.9 Bo Van Pelt 22 59 298.1 293.3 +4.8 Chris Riley 148 178 282.2 278.0 +4.2 Fred Couples 10 39 300.5 296.4 +4.1
As you can see, and as would be expected, the bulk of the players that added a few yards were well down the driving distance (DD) list. In all, there are 42 players that have increased distance from last year. Their average place in 2005’s DD was 112.57. Of the 99 players that lost distance from 2005, they averaged 88.78 in the 2005 DD stat… almost 25 spots higher than the group that increased in length off the tee.
Again, this didn’t really reveal anything too earth shattering, but it was fun to see not only who has jumped but by how much. Rich Beem has gone from 106th in 2005 to 38th this year… a 68-place improvement. At the other end of the spectrum you have J.L. Lewis, who has dropped 91 spots after losing 11.9 yards per drive. Sergio has also dropped 80 spots with the largest yard-per-drive drop of 15.6 yards. I wrote previously about Sergio’s putting, but now it looks like he’s losing another part of his game.
Loss of Distance = Loss of GIR?
Another point of previous research focused on DD and a player’s ability to get the ball closer to the hole on the greens (“proximity”). I found that they really didn’t correlate well. The advantage in proximity and/or GIR is a big argument to those that complain about the bombers, and they’re fond of saying “it’s easier to hit a wedge from the rough close than a 7-iron from the fairway.”
I found that there has been an average loss of distance this year of 2.3 yards per drive and an average loss of GIR of 1.45 percent. Don’t jump to any conclusions though, because if you plot it out for each player it doesn’t fit perfectly.
In the above graph, every player ranked in 2005 and 2006 has been plotted. Their loss or gain in distance is on the horizontal axis and their loss or gain in GIR is on the vertical. There is a definite slope to the line that says a loss in distance means a loss in GIR, but the points are very scattered. In fact, the RSquare value of the above chart is 0.06 (where a value of 1 is a perfect fit). This means that if you increased your distance it didn’t necessarily mean you would increase your GIR and vice versa.
Tag Ridings has been in our above charts and I’ll use him as an example. Distance haters would say that his increase of 7.4 yards would mean he is hitting a lot more greens and having more success… but the adverse is happening. Ridings has actually dropped in GIR from 65.1 to 59.7 percent. In fact, three of the top four players that boosted their distance dropped their GIR percent. The average of the top 10 in the same category averaged a loss of nearly a yard. Just because there is a drop GIR and DD in both doesn’t mean they necessarily have anything to do with each other.
Thoughts
After thinking about it, I’ve figured out what’s causing the drop this year. There must be word of steroids testing on the PGA Tour. I’m waiting for Tim Finchem to be called in front of Congress to testify to ensure that their sport is clean. I hope Tiger’s personal trainer doesn’t work for BALCO… that would be a media field day.
Personally, I think John Daly has been taking human growth hormone (HGH) for a while now. Heck, nobody on tour has grown more than him over the past 10 years.
I think one factor, that could contribute to less distance overall on the tour is the weather – look how many tournaments had postponed, delayed or cancelled rounds this year. Wet fairways weren’t a rare occurance…
Well, it’s very hard to compare the tournamnets that they’re playing now with the numbers at the end of last year. There’s one big flaw with these numbers. The courses that they are playing later in the year do favor the bombers more, thereby they will be hitting it harder. Some of the courses that they play will be harder when we’re coming out of the wetter season, increasing roll and distance.
So, they guys are hitting it shorter now off the maybe because some of these have played in some of the courses are tighter.
I’d love to see this article again at the end of the year. The results will be different.